


When Calls The Heart

by ThoughtfulBreadPolice



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Guilt, Its the end of the world baby, M/M, More tags to be added as we go, Not Wanda Friendly, Thanos is way worse here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:01:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23741962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoughtfulBreadPolice/pseuds/ThoughtfulBreadPolice
Summary: The static was loud as he turned the machines on, his grimy, unwashed face appearing in the cracked playback screen."This is Tony Stark, broadcasting wide range, to anyone out there. Thanos came back."
Relationships: Clint Barton/Tony Stark, relationships to be added as they come along
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	When Calls The Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I had this posted before, but I read it and cringed so this is the remake.

The static was loud as he turned the machines on, his grimy, unwashed face appearing in the cracked playback screen. 

_'It’s day twelve of month One, year seven AT. This is Tony Stark, broadcasting wide range, to anyone out there. If there is anyone even left to receive this. It’s been about seven years, earth time, since Thanos. After the snap, we thought… I don’t know what we thought. That we would heal? That we would grow again? Heh. No one expected Thanos to come back. None of us expected it. In our grief, many of our defenders went after him. They never came back. Dead, or stranded, we don’t know. But they never came back._

_Thanos. Thanos came back. In his anger at what he called our arrogance, he purged the planet and destroyed the atmosphere. Our world is a dead world now. No life grows on the surface, and the few of us that survived came here._

_In the final days, before the surface became uninhabitable I was able to send out a message across the planet to any survivors of The Purge, to make they're way here, to the underground. Some made it, and I'm sure, many more perished in the journey… It’s here that we live now. In the dark. It’s… it’s…_

_Is there anyone out there? Can anyone hear me? We need help. There are survivors here. Men, Women, Children. We are all that’s left. The last of humankind. We need, we are dying. … Please, he-'_

The old machines made one last feeble sound, a sad quiet whir, as it lost power and died. It’d taken nearly seven years to get enough saved and stored just to run it for those precious few minutes. Tony sobbed, silently to himself, and prayed to a god he didn’t believe in that somewhere out there, someone got the message. 

The Earth was dead. The last of her people were dying, and there was no salvation to be found. This broadcast had been the last hope for the human race. Few children had survived, and not one single child had been born in seven years. Not one. The conditions they lived in were just too bad. None of them were healthy and more died every day. Tony could not remember the last time any of them had bathed. Water was far too precious and they were running out. When the last barrel… there was nothing left. Without water, they couldn’t grow the few foods that could grow in the dark. That would be it for them.

“Tony? Did it work?” 

Before the snap, when Clint got to come home, Laura had told him exactly what Tony had done for them. For her kids. She told him how Thadeus Ross had been after them. Leverage against the rogue Hawkeye. Natasha’s data dump had put everything out there into the world, and Clint Barton and his alias had been put on a watch list. It was why he had retired in the first place, and Laura showed him no mercy in what she thought, what she felt, and what they were going to do next.

_‘Not even your children know you now Clinton. Nathaniel doesn’t know you., I don’t know you.’_ Her accusations, while true, still hurt, and they had cut deeply into his core and shook something loose inside him that he hadn’t even known was there.

Later, after the divorce and the frankly one-sided custody battle that cost him his children, Clint had had a sudden realization. He wasn’t as angry as he had been before. He was sad, yes. Still angry, yes. But at himself. It was like the red haze that had been covering his brain was gone, and it was that, more than anything, that made him think.

Clint remembered Loki. He remembered how it felt being trapped inside of his own mind. How it felt to be stuck there watching through his own eyes as his own hands did things he couldn't forgive himself for.

Wanda’s magic had been different. Subtle where Loki’s had been fast and dirty, Clint could tell the differences of before Wanda, and after Wanda. It wasn’t pretty, and Clint was ashamed of himself, because while Wanda had influenced him, had manipulated his mind, she hadn’t added things. Hadn’t warped him in some unrecognizable way.

What she’d done was take what was already there, the deep seated anger, the paranoia, the _want_ , and made it grow into something he’d had no chance of controlling.

So with the divorce over and done with, Clint ran. He ran as far and as fast as he could.

Then the snap happened and Clint found himself too far away to help the people he hadn’t seen or spoken to in over a year, but still cared about. It was just one more thing Clint would never be able to forgive himself for. Not being there with them, and yeah, maybe his being there wouldn’t have made any difference at all; but maybe, it would have made all the difference in the world and Clint just couldn’t shake that off. He didn’t want to, and after the snap… watching all those people around him turn to dust, he began making his way towards New York.

Because if any of the Avengers had survived, that’s where they would go. To Tony, because they, all of them, without fail, always went to Tony. At least they had until the Civil War.

And then, _Thanos came back._

In the aftermath of Thano’s desimation, Clint, like what was left of the human race, heard Tony’s final world wide broadcast. It had played for weeks over every frequency before going silent.

Those that made it, learned that what had been left of the Avengers had gone to confront Thanos on the planet they only knew as The Garden, and they had lost. 

Tony himself, hadn’t been a part of the decision to go, hadn’t even known until he’d received a message from Shuri telling him what the others had done.

If they were dead, if they had somehow survived, Tony didn’t know.

Clint took a breath and looked at the other man. He was hunched over, dirty hands clutching dirty hair. “Tony?”

Tony seemed to slump a little more, and pulled his hands away from his hair. “I don;t know Clint. I just-” Tony turned and looked at him, a hopeless sort of grief in his whiskey colored eyes. “I just don’t know. 

Tony sighed quietly and looked back at the dead screen in front of him. Tony felt again that things shouldn’t have gone the way they had. That maybe if he had just tried a little harder, things would have been different.

He;d said that to Clint once. After they had finally managed to reconcile. It had not come easy either that reconciliation, but they’d managed.

Tony stood and made to move past the other man, but Clint wrapped his arms around Tony and pulled him close, causing Tony to sigh into Clint’s neck.

Clint swallowed hard and tried to think of something he could say to the smaller man. After a few moments Clint huffed into Tony’s hair. “I'm trying to think of something that I can say to make you feel better.” He said when Tony made an inquiring noise.

“You being here makes me feel better.” Tony smiled a little as he looked up at him. “As cheesy as that sounds, it’s true. You make this.” Tony gestured around him “all of this, better just by being here. But if you want to know what would make me feel better physically…” Tony trailed off as Clint threw his head back and laughed.

Clint, after his laughter died down let out a soft sigh as he moved his hands up to cup Tony’s too thin face. “We did this once before.” He said, eyes soft as he looked at Tony. “Do you remember?”

“Yes.” Tony whispered. How could he not?

They’d been close to him and Clint, before Wanda. Very close, but Clint had been married and after a too close call, where both had very nearly kissed, they’d made sure to spend less time together. It had sucked, but Tony knew that whatever Clint felt for him, the man had loved his wife, and Tony refused to ruin that. 

“I remember.” Tony said. “Are you going to kiss me now?” _After all_ , Tony thought, _there was no more Laura, no more Pepper. It was just them._

Clint leaned in lips a hair's breadth from Tony’s own. “Will you smile for me if I kiss you?” he asked.

Tony let out a shuddering breath. “I’ll cry if you don't.”

Clint’s voice was all whiskey and smoke as he told Tony “Well, we can’t have that, can we?” and closed the gap between them.

There was no gentleness to be found in their first kiss. More than just a press of the lips, it was a kiss fueled by desperation and years of repressed feelings; both good and bad, and Tony felt it all and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are the validation every author needs.


End file.
